The University of Rochester Press / Boydell & Brewer has just published a collective monograph entitled Music in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia: Between Reform and Identity Building, edited by Hana Vlhová-Wörner and Jan Ciglbauer, as vol. 206 in its Eastman Studies in Music series. The book is one of the outputs of the project “Old Myths, New Facts: Czech Lands in Center of 15-century Music Developments”, funded by the Czech Science Foundation within their Expro scheme (smnf.cz).

The monograph covers the most significant phenomena in the musical tradition of the Czech lands in the 15th century and touches on the transformation of their interpretation by Czech and foreign historiography. The individual chapters provide insight into topics that were ignored or purposefully interpreted in 20th-century musicological research. Hussite and Utraquist culture, for example, revered and further developed the traditional liturgical forms and genres of Western church, as evidenced by the chapters devoted to sequences and songs intended to honor the memory of Jan Hus. Two other chapters focus on the development of Czech as a liturgical language and the use of songs in the practice of public and private piety. Here, a surprising partial return to Latin practice and the phenomenon of traditionalism in the Utraquist Church in the second half of the 15th century became apparent. The chapter devoted to polyphonic music in Czech sources, on the other hand, rehabilitates the reign of Vladislaus II Jagiellon and shows that even in relatively modest economic conditions, there was an early reflection of Franco-Flemish polyphony and contacts with the leading centers of this musical style. The myth of an isolated Hussite Bohemia is in many respects unfounded and not universally valid. The book concludes with a chapter on the reflection of Hussitism in the environment of the early national revival, which took place mostly without general knowledge of authentic sources from the early 15th century.

List of chapters

Sequences in Late Medieval Bohemia: Transformations in Genre, Form, and Function
Hana Vlhová-Wörner

Between Tradition and Heresy: Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Chants for Jan Hus
Rhianydd Hallas

Czech Liturgical Singing of the Later Fifteenth Century: Expression of Identity or Lost Local Tradition?
Eliška Baťová

Liturgy and Songs, ca. 1350–1520: On the Exclusiveness of the Bohemian Contribution
Jan Ciglbauer

Local Networks of New Polyphony in Bohemia, ca. 1470–1520: Sources, Repertory, and Performance Practice
Lenka Hlávková

Hussitism in Modern Czech Musical Culture: The Roots of Myths (1800–1848)
Viktor Velek

boydellandbrewer.com/book/music-in-fifteenth-century-bohemia-9781648251252/